Double standards of BJP exposed: Alagiri

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) president K S Alagiri on Saturday said that the double standard of the BJP has been exposed by the revoked bandh call issued by the party in Coimbatore.

Referring to bandh call issued by BJP leaders Vanathi Srinivasan and C P Radhakrishnan, Alagiri said that state BJP president Annamalai has submitted through his affidavit before the Madras High Court that he does not support the bandh.

“What is the official position of the BJP? The double standard of the BJP has been exposed even in this. The opportunistic politics of the BJP could be understood from this.”

Also criticising the demonstration organised by the state BJP against the ruling DMK for not doing enough to develop Tamil language, the TNCC chief referred to the allocation of Rs 643 crore for Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansidhan functioning under the Union HRD ministry in the last three years and said that only Rs 29 crore was allocated to classical languages like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada during the same period.

Describing the allocation to Sanskrit, which was 22% higher than other languages as an injustice, Alagiri said that in allocating more funds for Sanskrit and ignoring ancient regional languages the BJP has attempted to spread the RSS ideology.

Taking exception to Annamalai’s statement that they would hit the streets if the ruling DMK attempted to impose English in the pretext of fighting Hindi, Alagiri said that the BJP was staging a drama by opposing English with the intention to impose Hindi.